All posts in Be A Better Person

Victims, Virgins and Player Haters: Adventures In the Man-O-Sphere

by Dr. NerdLove on May 11, 2012 in Be A Better Person, meeting women, The Internets with 131 Comments
"They're coming to get you, Bobby..."

It’s been an interesting few days here at NerdLove Industries. In an odd confluence of events, some friends of mine sent me links to various Men’s Rights blogs and Anti-Game groups about topics like “creep-shaming” and the idea of “female privilege”. At the same time, Paging Dr. NerdLove apparently found itself in the crosshairs of a couple of the anti-PUA crusaders and became the topic of conversation for a few days, especially over Don’t Be a Creeper.

There are groups like PUAHate which purports to be fighting back against the Pick-Up Community for all of it’s purported scams and rip-off artists. There have been attempts to flood the comments section with complaints about how society is biased against men, how women hold all the aces, how women are lazy because they demand that men approach them and I personally was contributing to the bias against the socially awkward.

Then there were were the fringes –  virgin theory and paleo-diet conspiracies, peans to the plight of the white male…

It’s been an interesting rabbit hole to fall down, let me tell you.

Now, the reason I’m bringing this up isn’t to make fun or shine a light on them and say “Hey, look at all the weirdos out there!”

Quite the opposite in fact. Y’see, I have a lot of sympathy for these guys.

Now, before you all start wondering if I’m about to join the Male-o-sphere and ranting about misandry about how feminism is actually everything that’s wrong with the world, let me explain.

Continue reading “Victims, Virgins and Player Haters: Adventures In the Man-O-Sphere” »

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Too Goddamn Perfect

by Dr. NerdLove on May 2, 2012 in Advice, Ask Dr. NerdLove, Be A Better Person with 64 Comments

Today’s Ask Dr. NerdLove is a longer and slightly more rambling question than I usually run with, but it illustrates a problem that I think a lot of younger guys (and girls, really) have that doesn’t get talked about all that often. Sometimes it’s just a case of someone you know who… Well, I should probably let the writer do the talking, huh?

Take it away:

Hey Doc, 

  I just found this place and man, I’m going to be using the crap out of it. Your ability to not sugar coat anything is refreshing, and I’m wondering if you can help me out. You see, all I see myself is as average, and while topics such as ‘How to be interesting‘ and others are good, I never feel as if it relates to my situation.

What is my situation? I’m a nerdy guy in high school (Or what you would call high school anyhow) and while I’m not particularly looking for any relationship, I never feel like I could ever be in one. My Crush is way, way out of my league (not in a popular clique way, just in I assume I wouldn’t get the time of day and I’ve waited to long to make a move) and all the time I feel obscenely average. Sure, I get better grades than a lot of people, which then makes me feel guilty that I whine, but I don’t feel much in the self-worth department.  TDP doesn’t help.

TDP is Too Damn Perfect, I guy I am friends with but half the time want to rip his throat out. You see, I sit next to him in lessons, and every time he recites a particular anecdote, or performs some amazing magic trick or slight of hand,  I want to punch him in the face then inevitably be destroyed by his black belt Taekwondo skills (After mockingly berating my for calling it karate)

See where I’m going with this? From my perspective this guy has it all, a string of romantic interests, good sports skills, way better at all subjects, general knowledge, and most infuriatingly, nerdy interests that he can dive into (For example, what for what I class as being a die-hard fan he would beat me in a trivia contest as a person who is only slightly interested). He’s a good guy, and obviously not trying to make me feel like shit, but he does. If I ever brig up the subject he’ll just go on about how he’s not the best and he hates that and bitch about it. Similar to what I do but, hey ho, I’ve never had a real relationship (move on to that later….)

It really doesn’t help that TDP is a member of the band I’m in (It’s definitely not mine ). Playing bass is about the only interesting thing I do (And in music terms that’s still the dullest) , and while I can play, I only have a basic knowledge of actual playing, rather than anything technical. So when TDP comes in talking about scales and fancy Italian words I want to hit him with his drumsticks. To top it all off he can play bass at what I perceive to be the same as my, which brings me out in red. 

Usually I can suppress this anger and just hang around him. But every so often he’ll say one harmless comment which I take as particularly condescending and and up pissed for the rest of the day. I know I need to get over myself and live my own life, but this cycle and getting pissed and leaving it needs to stop and your the harsh talking kind of guy to do it. I feel insecure, worthless, and end up contemplating-  What is my chance with a woman if they can pick the superior guy next to me?

Now, I’ll mention relationships now (Juicy rather than white boy problems). I’ve had pretty much no action in my life. I tried to get to know someone over Facebook (Pathetic I know) and that just fizzled, and while I’ve had a couple offers, they’ve all been from people I consider friends, nothing else there. The only action I’ve ever had is at a boozy party (I am not a crook!) My mates decided it was time they really got pissed, and being boring as hell, I didn’t like the idea at all. Still, I went, barely had a drop, but the interesting thing is a drunk chick (who I don’t know) coming onto me. Seeing because I’m lame and old-fashioned, I did not want to take advantage of her when drunk, so just pushed her away. At school I was getting ribbed by my friends and she was apologizing profusely , noting how she gave ‘a bad first impression’ and ‘would want to talk as normal people’. End of the week my band was playing an open mike night and she and her friends were there. After a crap load of peer pressure, I was pushed towards her sitting alone (I follow some rules) and we talked. And kissed. I was pretty on top of the world- first kiss, first chance of a relationship, I was clapping myself on the back for not taking advantage…..

Then it fell apart. I hung out with her and her friends for the day a few days later (Staying in contact before then) and it was okay at first, but she seemed distant later on in retrospect. Day after, by text of all things, she confesses how she was only liking me as a friend and it wasn’t going to work out.

Fan-bloody-tastic. 

In retrospect I was more into the idea of a relationship than one specifically with her, but still it hurt. No-one seemed to ask about it at all, so I kept it bottled up. This came with the insecurities of thinking if one day is all it takes for someone to not stand me, then I must be unattractive as hell. Plus I haven’t talked to her since then, so I really have no closure whatsoever.  To bring it full circle though, she mentioned how someone was annoyed at her for coming onto me in the first place, because the other girl had a thing for me,  and then my crush, as a passing comment, noted she hated her (The drunk). My brain put two and two together, and I came to the conclusion my crush may like me!

Of course that is more wishful thinking than if your house fell down Punk’d will come out and laugh at you. I know it is extremely unlikely it’s connected, yet it has brought my infatuation with my crush to new heights. My lack of self esteem, proneness to jealousy, hatred of the social hierarchy, fear of being a fool, and knowing I’ve missed my chance prevents me from doing anything. Besides, as you’ve said, high-school romances suck (though not from where I’m standing…)  

So what can you prescribe Doc.? I am assuming a bottle of Man-the-fuck-up and some Get-the-fuck-over-yourself  are going to be useful, with some added Believe-in-yourself and that snake oil. It’s been good to vent anyhow, I just want to know, when the hell can I stop comparing myself to others and start getting to places with women? I’m guessing college, but that’s just too far away…

Pretty Bloody Average

Continue reading “Ask Dr. NerdLove: Too Goddamn Perfect” »

The 5 Most Common Insecurities In Men (And How To Overcome Them)

by Dr. NerdLove on April 16, 2012 in Be A Better Person, Health, Lifestyle with 55 Comments

It should come as no surprise that confidence is a big deal when it comes to success at dating. Confidence, after all, is sexy.

The problem of course, is that confidence can be hard to come by. Confidence boosting is a big-money industry these days. Even the Pick-Up Artist community is flooded with products designed to help men with what they call “inner game” issues. But for all for all of the times we wrestle with issues of deservedness or a scarcity mentality, there are certain areas where men are just especially vulnerable.

Men are more sensitive than culture gives them credit for. For all of the proclamations of manliness and machismo and how men just don’t worry about the same things that women do, the male ego is surprisingly fragile. We may be able to endure the jocular insults and shit-talking that are often part and parcel of male friendship but there are certain areas that are just off-limits. They’re little emotional Van Der Graaf generators of anxiety that serve to wreck a man’s self-esteem, prompting him to throw hundreds or thousands of dollars towards any snake-oil or hokum that promises to fix the issue.

"Now with 100% more bullshit!"

 

The problem is, of course, in your head rather than on it… or in your shorts, for that matter. But let’s look at the top 5 most common insecurities in men… and talk about how you can overcome them.

Continue reading “The 5 Most Common Insecurities In Men (And How To Overcome Them)” »

What Does It Mean To Be A Man?

by Dr. NerdLove on April 9, 2012 in Be A Better Person, Lifestyle, Sexuality with 78 Comments
AKA: "Why the fuck is this guy getting more tail than me?"

Give love advice to dudes for long enough and eventually you come up on the question of “What does it mean to be a man?”

At first, this question may sound like basic Philosophy 101 material, the same sort of intellectual masturbation that we think is, like, soooo deep after a couple of joints or bong hits at 3 in the morning in your dorm room. The first instinct is frequently to give a flippant answer and move on. “Being a man means being able to fold a map and never stop for directions.” “Being a man means getting yelled at for forgetting to put the seat down.”

Then you start to realize that, no, this is a serious question. For the last several decades, society has been grappling with this nebulous sense that somehow, we as a culture have “lost” what it means to be masculine. Sociologists, pundits, and writers – male and female, feminist and otherwise – have been wrestling with the idea of what makes a man, whether we’ve lost sight of it and if we have, whether this is a good or a bad thing.

The anxiety about what manhood manifests itself in myriad ways. As the economy crashed, news media began to run breathless articles about the “man-cession” – the struggle for men to find or keep work while women outnumbered them for the first time in the workplace. Universities were thought to have reached a point of crisis as male attendance began to wane and the performance of male students flagged behind women. Pop culture brings us shows like Mad Men wade into the nostalgia of a lost era when “men were men”  while fantasy series such as The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones externalizes the concept of masculine power versus feminine in a realm where the rules as we know them have been tossed aside and every day is a literal struggle to survive. Movies celebrate the overgrown man-child and what it means to grow up. Men, desperate for an external source to help quell the insecurity and nagging feeling that something is missing turn to groups that promise to restore that feeling of “manliness”, whether it’s the Promise Keepers or the Pick Up Artist community.

Society tells us that we’ve lost something… but nobody seems to knows what, exactly, that it was, or how we lost it. Some blame women for stealing it from us, or for convincing us to give it away. Some blame our culture and how it’s evolved. All we know is that something is off, but we don’t know why or what to do about it, so we’re casting about for answers.

The idea of a growing “masculine crisis” is a popular one; it externalizes the feeling of angst about  who we are as men and what we’re supposed to be doing. Now instead of a nebulous feeling, it’s something we can understand: it’s a threat, a problem… something we can take action on rather than sitting around and worrying about it. Of course, to do that, we’d need a better idea of just what the issue is… but never mind that! Crisis! Rawr!

So… let’s talk about it. What does it mean to be a man in the 21st century? Strap yourself in, this is gonna be a long one.

Continue reading “What Does It Mean To Be A Man?” »

The Madonna-Whore Complex and You

by Dr. NerdLove on March 30, 2012 in Be A Better Person, Communication, Relationships, Sexuality with 38 Comments
"You *know* we have the better parties too..."

Hey Jenny, Jenny
Why are you crying?
There’s a beauty of a moon in the sky
But I guess when you’ve been
leading such a sheltered life
You never lift your head and look so high

The process of getting better at dating and relationships – especially for men – is a tricky one. As much as men need to work to improve the practical aspects of their game – the ability to approach stranger, knowing how to flirt, the use of body language, even how to master the power of texting and phone calls – they also need to work on the mental aspects.

Earlier this week, we talked about self-limiting beliefs and how they can hold you back from the life you want. Today, we’re going to continue that conversation, dealing with one of the most distressingly common beliefs out there – one that actively affects women as much as men, distressingly enough.

We’re talking about the Madonna/Whore complex. You can see it manifested in pop culture – the virginal, even repressed “good girl” (usually a blonde) and the “fallen” femme fatale (usually a brunette) for whom sex is a weapon and men are merely tools are playthings. You see it in how men – and women – refer to women’s behavior and in how men treat the women in their lives.

And this belief is hurting everyone.

Continue reading “The Madonna-Whore Complex and You” »

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